I haven’t ever actually met a ‘true’ nihilist anyway, being that ‘meaninglessness’ becomes a pretty powerful personal ‘narrative’ for some people, as you say. I’ve not quite been able to grasp how such a position is no-position, but have found it instead to be as ‘useful’ and persistent a thought as any narrative - at least to those who so choose it. Such a thought is also frequently the last thought a person might have when they off themselves. No point (meaning, purpose) in living anyway . . . .

I’ve always been interested in the relationship between zen buddhism and existentialism, even and especially at the point of their most glaring distinction: the existentialist, in my estimation, would find any and all attempts to dissolve the vicissitudes of self-hood into a vast metaphysics of no-self, or being a part of self itself (atman), or being all effect with no individual agency, and every other way we might console ourselves for these living vicissitudes by thinking we are not selves at all the highest act of cowardice and ‘bad faith’ possible.

Anyway, as you say, we go about constructing meaning anyway. Once one has made the realization of no inherent meaning to the universe, one still has the project of their own lives to pursue (even the nihilist, resting in the tower of meaninglessness). Externalized meaning (an intentional God and an intentional universe) is simply a sloppy abstraction of the human condition. We don’t appear to do well without meaning, whether we take responsibility for creating it, or fail to see our responsibility (or, “source-hood”) in creating it by abstracting it into any metaphysics of intention.

In other words, one ‘steps back a rung’ after hanging their asses out over the abyss.

I would think given the above that listening to, watching, and participating in the creation of meaning is what we have. Rather than treading upon each other’s ‘stories’ – each other’s ‘narratives’ – with the constant reminder of no inherent meaning to anything – that we tread only upon that which is in us to do – apply reason to our meaning-making at every turn. None of us can occupy the object (the universe) itself. We can only be subject-of it and subject-to it.

Are you 'in' your Life Pye.What's the mood?Is it dragging you along?Given you are the project of you imagining.Is the projection working out?Are you 'pulling it off'?Winning?Getting the most out of it?Is it thrilling?

Good enough?

I've heard Heidegger and Arendt toured Germany in the mid 1920's, renting public halls, and delivered charismatic performances that generated 'astonishment' in the audiences minds.They worked off a prepared script to get the result.I wouldn't mind having that script.Heidegger's 'clearing' is Zen's 'nothing'.

You think? Something happens in that clearing - the "disclosure" of being, as Sartre would have said. There is, after all, only existence. That would not be nothing. But feel free to expound . . . .

So Dennis, do you have a script? Would you really take a script from Heidegger/Arendt? Would you take a script from anyone/anywhere but yourself? Do you consider your verses revolving around nothingness and no meaning to be a script? These are genuine questions.

Are you 'in' your Life Pye.What's the mood?Is it dragging you along?Given you are the project of you imagining.Is the projection working out?Are you 'pulling it off'?Winning?Getting the most out of it?Is it thrilling?

Dennis: Words have meaning. They point to external referents — things that exist outside themselves in the real world: agents, actions, and objects. It is their “about-ness,” their correspondence to something lying beyond a system of signs, that allows them to mean something.

Now here's another question, perhaps a little more flavoured with steerage: What is the word "nothing" pointing to? What is someone talking about when they use it?

I'd suggest it is something, most definitely something. And that there are no words for no-thing. And that it is impossible to grasp, visualize, or even reconcile oneself to no-thing.

Thinking about thinking is a project.What Heidegger brought to bear.What the Zen Koen discloses.

One has a Logos that gives a mood.Dasien, mood and understanding.Thought arrives in language.

Thinking about thinking is to ask what is it for, what does it do?

We live in a house of language.

language is a formation into a Story told and lived.a Story believed in is a shackling of Being.

A story thingifies existence.A clearing is a dwelling in infinite (no thing)When the thinking is cleared,there is the unconcealment of Being.Being is no thing.

A Zen Koen is intentionally 'meaningless'to break down reliance on thinking.to 'get' thinking.

to 'get' thinking is to 'get the story straight'.

there's no thoughtless experience.We have to 'get' thought as a 'what's it for, what's it do'.

for the ultimate sake of which?

it's empty and meaninglessthatit's empty and meaningless.

This distinction concerning 'thinking/language'was shanghaid by the new age sharks who declared 'you are what you think''think and grow rich'shackling of Being.

At night, when I 'snuggle into the doona' and the days events stream by,there's a cognition,'what the fuck was I thinking'I fucked up at some point usually,I get to admit it.warmth and compassion radiates,Being restores.absence of meaning is a wonderful promise for 'tomorrow brings'the way is littered with failings

Disclosure lies in the space between "no" and "thing." To read it again - in that space, that clearing :) - is to reach a deeper nuance. And to do that, one cannot surpass the irreducible presence of the verb of being - "is."

Space . . . is something. A void . . . is something. Emptiness . . . is something . . . . being is the only thing. Is is all there is.

Dennis wrote:This distinction concerning 'thinking/language'was shanghaid by the new age sharks who declared 'you are what you think''think and grow rich'shackling of Being.

At night, when I 'snuggle into the doona' and the days events stream by,there's a cognition,'what the fuck was I thinking'I fucked up at some point usually,I get to admit it.warmth and compassion radiates,Being restores.absence of meaning is a wonderful promise for 'tomorrow brings'the way is littered with failings

Well, you are just a party waiting to happen.

I am with you in the "I fucked up at some point usually" admission. But the warmth and compassion only ever radiates for others, since lying in the doona I know I will have to face my fuck-ups the very next day or at some other point.

Let me ask you this. You're an Aussie. What do you make of Rhonda Byrne's The Secret?

- from mind's point of view :)consciousness is always consciousness-of (something). This self-same consciousness-of-the-world/objects tells me that the world/objects don’t need me/mind to exist, so working it in that direction, no . . . . unless I’m all about solipsism. We don’t have pure parallelism here; we have ambiguity.

may as well be friendly.Hello.getting to know yougetting to know all about you.

Hi Dennis :) . . . object to me as I am object to you. Yes, we find (and we make) the shape of ourselves through every other thing . . . .

Yes, we have to see that conventionally an appearance of separate selves exists and that ultimately it's not the case.

Books like 'the secret' assume that a separate self can actually do something.

How I fuck up is putting labels on people and brush past them and in so doing miss the opportunity to actually listen to what they are caring about and thereby lose the conscious contact that unconceals those very nuances of being that are so inspiring.It's so expensive living in the machine, time out for Being gets taken away.

In your University role have you come across a book by Afrikan Spir called 'thoughts and reality' (english translation).It's said to have influenced Nietshcke.

Dennis: How I fuck up is putting labels on people and brush past them and in so doing miss the opportunity to actually listen to what they are caring about and thereby lose the conscious contact that unconceals those very nuances of being that are so inspiring.It's so expensive living in the machine, time out for Being gets taken away.

You know what I was thinking? I was thinking more like the rock-bottom profundity of the meaningless universe - which you have clearly and sincerely realized - is something you actually value enough to want others to realize it, too. And only that you might have been pointing out their scripts (rather than, as you say, actually listening) to them under the assumption that they don't get this yet. Some might have seen like you, Dennis, and sort of brought the 'mountain' back and started creating consciously, fluidly, anyway, as we are wont to do.

The universe of no meaning still cannot be said to be wholly without it, for the universe also contains these strange creatures such we who go about constructing, deconstructing, accepting, rejecting it anyway. We can't find our asses with both hands without a 'script' :)

In your University role have you come across a book by Afrikan Spir called 'thoughts and reality' (english translation).It's said to have influenced Nietshcke.

No, I have not, in that or any other role :) but I take this into consideration now, ta very much.

But such a thesis of who-and-such might have influenced Nietzsche interests me, too, and I wish I could give you the name of one book I've ferreted it out in, but I would have to give you the name of nearly 100 books and novellas that assemble into Balzac's Comedie Humaine. Nietzsche's rare mentions of him are snide and dismissive - especially on the grounds of Balzac's "ambition" - but Nietzsche read him, he owned a volume of Balzac's letters, and I have for years been reading (and rereading) my way through the whole oeuvre and having epiphanies regarding this 'secret' influence so far down the dark hallway, I hope I can find my way back. I don't have any professional ambition to do much of anything with what I find. I suppose I could be criticized for that.

If you'll permit just a wee bit more effusiveness, we seem to owe our Dostoevsky to Balzac himself, the former who wrote of how Balzac's nascent 'realism' lit the fire in Dostoevsky to become a novelist; Henry James referred to Balzac as the greatest psychologist of human behaviour ever to write; Marx and Engels pitched in for the acute attention Balzac paid to material reality and class circumstances. I'm not sure I have an 'objective' view of Balzac's writing anymore, in that I've just been living in it, being there, etc. (etc. = loving).

There we go. It's about what we love, what we value. And no philosophy of negation or nothingness can escape being something, too. An "is," every one of them :)

Here is the wisdom of no thing, in my estimation: when we come to understand consciousness and being not as it's at all, but as processes (as I like to say - as verb and not as noun) then we come to understand being, which is always becoming. In that sense, no thing, for it is never in a thing-shape long enough to be anything but becoming. Including the 'things' in it, also in the meta-stable state of becoming.

Myself, I see this also with and as human consciousness, think-ing. inging. always in an ongoing state of -ing :) and much of what we're -ing-ing after is mean-ing. important nutrients upon which consciousness clearly seeks to move, in error or otherwise . . . .

Yes, constant transformation.Rolling out possibilities.(stand by for the latest windows update,oh yeah,and concerning the last windows update,it's empty and meaningless,oh, yeah,and if you want to squawk about it,it's empty and meaningless that it's empty and meaningless)

Rational means 'in ratio'having it in perspective all the way through.the possibility of right view.

no thing means not finite.obviously there's an 'engine room' happening uncontactable by the senses,contactable by Reason.Rather than trying to generate 'meaning' on finite things that can't always 'be there' because of transformation.Let's make our meaning conscious contact with the 'engine room'.

Each person, as an individual expression of infinite is an access point for listening.It's astonishing what can be heard.It takes the breath away if conditions are so, so.

I'll check out Balzac, thanks for that.Looks like an insight there.Treasure hunt.Thanks for being there Pye.

obviously there's an 'engine room' happening uncontactable by the senses,contactable by Reason.

This is very interesting, and very layered. The notion of an 'engine room' presents us with a cheerful sense of organization to things, not to mention a locus around which they all revolve. This metaphor is apt then in the sense it speaks of motion, becoming ('engine'), but weak in the sense of implying metaphysical 'location.' Is there a 'center' to things, Dennis? Still, I think I get what you meant.

Secondly, it steers us into bifurcating ourselves into body one thing, mind another, and I just don't know when we'll ever get past that metaphysical hangover :) Reason, in my estimation, is a sense-making organ very much like all the other ones. We use reason to make sense of things, too.

Nevertheless, I get you here as well, and appreciate your use of the word 'reason' over that of 'logic,' which I can demonstrate with a reasonable and not logical metaphor: I think of logic as the soles of the shoes we walk in inquiry: firm, inflexible footfalls, well-protected from slipping. Logic makes it possible to find and stand upon the ground, but it is reason that allows us to travel its terrain. Reason makes up the laces of the shoes, keeps them on our feet and lets them bend and flex to the nuances of the ground as we travel it, as well as accommodating the shape of our particular strides . . . .

Rather than trying to generate 'meaning' on finite things that can't always 'be there' because of transformation.Let's make our meaning conscious contact with the 'engine room'.

Any lover of wisdom is after the what-is (what folks 'round these parts call Truth), yet I am thinking such a thing will not be a thing, and will not be located in a place but in all places and with all things. I've just never been able to get on board with the persistently platonic downgrading of appearances, of manifestations, of things, for they are the what-is, happening right before us. That things transform - become - generates its own meaning, yet still we are largely beset with god-dreaming: finding that place, or that thought, or that stillness where all has stopped moving and come to "be" - found a "state" to be in; become "complete." Poor us! Stuck with the motion of consciousness and sick with its movement! How can we expect to find this 'state' when we are all process!

I might say it this way: all matters are worldly matters, and the spiritual is the material, flesh . . . .

Some days I do 'grumpy' really well.

:) you're alright, Dennis. Those kinds of things only happen to us when we get "stuck" . . . . :)

Dennis wrote:Books like 'the secret' assume that a separate self can actually do something.

I think it is empty and meaningless as well - but since you think everything is, I was wondering if you actually read it or even looked at it.

The reason I ask is that this book - and its associated money-generating DVD and public following - expressly states that one doesn't have to do anything. One merely has to think positively and magically only positive things will happen to one, including riches and success, etc., and therefore presumably, happiness and fulfillment.

Reminds my of Monty Python:

Alan: Well, last week we showed you how to be a gynaecologist. And this week on 'How to Do It' we're going to learn how to play the flute, how to split the atom, how to construct box girder bridges and how to irrigate the Sahara and make vast new areas cultivatable, but first, here's Jackie to tell you how to rid the world of all known diseases.

Jackie: Hello Alan.

Alan: Hello Jackie.

Jackie: Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvelous cure for something, and then, when the medical world really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be diseases any more.

Alan: Thanks Jackie, that was great.

Noel: Fantastic.

Alan: Now, how to play the flute. (picking up a flute) Well you blow in one end and move your fingers up and down the outside.

Noel: Great Alan. Well, next week we'll be showing you how black and white people can live together in peace and harmony, and Alan will be over in Moscow showing you how to reconcile the Russians and the Chinese. Til then, cheerio

If you got in touch with Hubert Dreyfus over at Berkeley who teaches Heidegger's Being and Time he will confirm what I say.He tells his students there is something to 'get'.A distinction.It's a distinction about thinking/language.thinking about thinking.Buddha/Nagajuna try to get at the same thing.

Buddha didn't talk about Absolute/No thing/Non-duality although he knew it.He wanted to show something else.How human being could be free of conditoned meaning.No thing is free of intrinsic meaning.Universe is free of intrinsic meaning, otherwise constant transformation wouldn't be the case.The problem human being has is ascribing 'fixed meaning' on phenomena (story), attaching to it, and suffering when the story breaks down as it will.And then there's the fighting over whose story is the right story.If reality is free of intrinsic meaning, it's ludicrous for human being to shackle itself to stories that ascribe intrinsic meaning to anything.

Buddha stated it was totally useless to talk about Absolute because all that students would have is a Story to shackle their Being to.In that way, locked into a story, the felt experience of freedom of being is unattainable.

To have 'freedom of being' available he distinguished 3 things for focus,emptiness, impermanence, selflessness.

Nagajuna emphasised,form is empty (arises out of causes/conditions)that empty only exists if there is form,therefore empty is form itself,therefore empty is empty.

It's like a person only truly appreciates life fully if they 'know' death fully.Life is suddenly vibrant.A distinction is realised.light is brought on the subject.there is and there isn't.one isn't 'homeless' any more.one is 'in' life authentically.

if one knows empty,one knows form,

collapse form,no thing is unconcealed,the truth of Being,

there's a forest of meaning roundabout to attach to.make a clearing in the forest,dwell there.

basil, first I want to say 'I like you'.whatever that means, it frees me up.

with the rising of Zen, Heidegger and the distinction of emptiness in the West over the last 50 years.that one's Being is free,that meaning is imputed,that one isn't essentially required to find one's Being as a cog in a social machine.

I've got this butter knife in a drawer.It was made in 1820 or so.It's been in the family since then.through various deaths it's landed in my lap.it's meant to have 'meaning'.it's giving me the shits.I can't have it and I can't get rid of it.

It's my existential crisis.Can someone come over and steal the fuckin' thing.the keys under the mat.2nd drawer down in the cupboard next to the sink.don't take the computer from the adjoining room.

Dennis writes: the freedom to be grumpy or whatever mood shows up is authentic.

Not to go all analytic on your ass or anything, but what does this mean? I’m pretty sure Heidegger’s “moodedness” has no such freedom-to-feel-or-not implied. Moodedness is stuckness. authentically. :)

Dennis: If reality is free of intrinsic meaning, it's ludicrous for human being to shackle itself to stories that ascribe intrinsic meaning to anything.

Ludicrousness probably laughs all the way to the Being-bank if we think only the truth is functional for human-being.

It depends on what one thinks this is all about. Getting it "right" or being it. Truth over Life? What is that? i.e. what could either mean alone?

Dennis: It's like a person only truly appreciates life fully if they 'know' death fully.

That’s how I feel about meaning . . . . :) It only means something when you realize . . . etc.

culture looks like,a gathering of crows strung out along a wire,chattering 'catch-phrases' at each other.containing each other in a 'holding pattern'.the enormity of the swindle.

It's that kind of cognition that once realised,opens up,the possibility,freedom of being.

Well of course, the freedom for the possibility for being has always been there. But you also know the project is doomed from the start. There will never be being for all that becomes. And there cannot be anything in freedom. Freedom isn’t anything but more of itself. Something happens in that clearing . . . .

Choosing - under these conditions, with this knowledge - is something for people not afraid of losing it . . . .

Dennis wrote:it's empty and meaningless that it's empty and meaningless

Dear Dennis, given that the term "inherent meaning" does not apply to phenomena and things, would you agree that mind imputes meaning, that this meaning arises from wisdom or ignorance, that meaning arising from wisdom enlightens and meaning arising from ignorance attaches, that wisdom imputes joy and ignorance imputes suffering.